The Left's Most Dangerous Fairytale

The Ideology That Helps Fascism More Than the Right Ever Could

There is a fantasy that keeps killing leftist movements more than any right-wing conspiracy, any billionaire funded opposition research, any stolen election or crooked politician. It is seductive in a way that disguises itself as courage. The notion we keep preaching to each other until we’re blue in the face that, “Things have to get worse, before they get better.”

Sound familiar?

It should, because leftist’s have been doing it throughout history all over the globe and it’s bitten them in the ass every time. We say, let the contradictions sharpen. Let them taste their own medicine. Let them feel the full weight of their vote. Then they’ll radicalize! Then they’ll be ready! I’m guilty of muttering these exact same words. I even wrote a Substack piece on it that went viral. So, I know I’m not alone in my thinking. But, I also realize that to be progressive is to have the intellectual flexibility to shift my thinking when necessary.

But it never turns out the way we think. And history has already proven it.

This is accelerationism. The fairytale story leftist’s tell themselves to ease their own anxiety of the fact that they just willingly held the door open for fascism and handed them a cocktail and an appetizer as they walked passed the threshold. This is our fault too, because we very well could’ve stopped it and didn’t.

Let’s go back to Weimar. This is when the leftists held the door open to fascism in Germany.

The German Communist party (KPD) had a name for the Social Democrats (SPD). They called them, Socialfaschisten which translates to, social fascists. The logic was pure accelerationist theology. By making capitalism liveable, by winning incremental reforms, the SPD was delaying revolution. They were the real enemy.

So, when Shitler began his accent, the KDP didn’t form a united front with the SPD. In fact, they gave them the middle finger and told them to piss off. Much like what we are seeing in American politics now. They ran against them siphoning votes, lied, broke promises and in some cases, KDP members collaborated with Nazi brown shirts against Social Democrat Unions.

History is rhyming like a motherfucker right now. The same playbook is unfolding across the United States — except they've swapped brown shirts for ICE uniforms. Red states get quiet cooperation and jail transfers. Blue states get terror raids, National Guard deployments, and American bodies in the street.

By 1933, both parties were banned and their leaders were in the same concentration camps. The lesson that was supposed to be learned throughout all of this was that immiseration does not produce class consciousness. It produces desperation. And desperation is far more easily captured by fascism than socialism. When people are drowning, they don’t reach for wishful thinking, they reach for whatever hand is closest.

The Correct Solution

Power before Purity.

The left loses when it treats the worst outcome as a necessary precondition for the best one. Harm reduction is not collaboration. Every time the left refuses incremental gains on the grounds that it delays the revolution, it makes a concrete choice to let real people absorb real damage in service of wishful thinking, an abstract theory. Abstract thinking alone isn't a strategy — and history has made that case over and over. At some point, repeatedly reaching into the fire isn't passion, it's habit. We need better tactics. We're smarter than this. Let's start acting like it.

I remember watching this movie back in the 90’s, called, Grumpy Old Men. There’s a scene with one of the old guys and he’s grocery shopping with his son and he throws a package of bacon in the cart and his son says, “Pop, I wish you’d try the low-fat bacon.” And his pop replies, “Well, you can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which gets filled first.”

So, I ask my fellow leftists, “which hand filled faster with MAGA?”

A perfectly radicalized mass emerging from crisis is not supported by a single major historical example. What emerges from crisis is whoever was best organized before it. The enemy is not the moderate. When the left directs it’s primary shark attack at reformists and harm-reducers, it is engaged in self-destruction that will always benefit the right.

There’s a specific historical name for treating allies as more dangerous than opponents. It’s Socialfaschismus. And we all know how that ended.

The question has never been whether the left’s analysis is correct. It’s always been whether the left wants to be right or whether it wants to win.

Those two are not the same project.